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A forest clearing at Naimisharanya, sages seated on the ground, and before them a reciter who has the old stories by heart: there the tradition places the first telling of the Puranas. Vyasa compiled them, by the tradition’s own account; his student Romaharshana received them; and Romaharshana’s son Ugrashrava, known as Suta, recited them to the assembly. What he told took the deep matters of the Veda, cast them as story, and carried them into every household. The Puranas derive their own name: the Vayu Purana, in 1.203, takes the word from what lived in the past, and the gloss pura api navam, old and yet new, gives the sense exactly, that which, even as it grows ancient, stays new.
What makes a Purana
The tradition’s definition is exact. A Purana carries five things, together the panchalakshana, the five marks: sarga, the making of the world; pratisarga, its dissolution and remaking; vamsha, the lineages of the gods and the sages; manvantara, the ages of the Manus; and vamshanucharita, the chronicles of kings. Held against that definition, the surviving Mahapuranas fit unevenly: the five marks fill a small part of most of them, and the rest is vows, pilgrimages, rites, and the praise of one deity, the observation Ludo Rocher records in The Puranas, his 1986 survey. The stories run between the marks, and it is for the stories that people read the Puranas most of all.
The Eighteen Mahapuranas
The Mahapuranas are counted as eighteen. Tradition sorts them by the three gunas, the three strands of nature, according to which deity’s glory stands foremost: in the sattvika Puranas the glory of Vishnu usually leads, in the rajasa that of Brahma, in the tamasa that of Shiva. The grouping below follows the Uttara Khanda of the Padma Purana, with the verse count the Bhagavata Purana gives in 12.13.4 to 9. Those figures are the ideal ones; the surviving manuscripts differ a little among themselves.
Sattvika (Vishnu-predominant)
- Vishnu Purana, about 23,000 verses: six portions that open with the making of the world, carry Dhruva and Prahlada, and close on the life of Krishna.
- Bhagavata Purana, about 18,000 verses: twelve skandhas, with the tenth, the lila of Krishna, at the heart.
- Narada Purana, about 25,000 verses: bhakti unfolded at length, with the vows and pilgrimages that sustain it.
- Garuda Purana, about 19,000 verses: the soul’s course after death, stage by stage, and the shraddha rites for the dead.
- Padma Purana, about 55,000 verses: from the Srishti-khanda, the book of creation, out to the glories of holy place after holy place.
- Varaha Purana, about 24,000 verses: set in the age of the Varaha avatar, the boar, and given to the earth and its vows.
Rajasa (Brahma-predominant)
- Brahma Purana, about 10,000 verses: creation, then a long devotion to holy places, Utkala and Konark above all.
- Brahmanda Purana, about 12,000 verses: the cosmos unfolding as the egg of Brahma, and within it the Lalita Sahasranama, the thousand names of the Goddess.
- Brahmavaivarta Purana, about 18,000 verses: whole books for Ganesha and for Krishna, and the lila of Radha and Krishna told at length.
- Markandeya Purana, about 9,000 verses: a frame in which birds do the telling, the tale of Harishchandra, and within it the Devi Mahatmya.
- Bhavishya Purana, about 14,500 verses: vows, the worship of the sun, and, as its name promises, things to come.
- Vamana Purana, about 10,000 verses: set around the Vamana avatar, the dwarf, with stories of Shiva and Parvati alongside.
Tamasa (Shiva-predominant)
- Shiva Purana, about 24,000 verses: arranged in samhitas, with Sati and Parvati, Kartikeya and Ganesha, and the twelve Jyotirlingas.
- Linga Purana, about 11,000 verses: the glory of the Shivalinga, and creation told from that center.
- Skanda Purana, about 81,000 verses: the largest of the eighteen, set around Kartikeya, with holy places almost beyond counting, Kashi and Setu among them.
- Agni Purana, about 15,000 verses: an encyclopedia in the form of a Purana, many branches of knowledge under one name.
- Matsya Purana, about 14,000 verses: set around the Matsya avatar, the fish, with the great dissolution and the lineages of kings.
- Kurma Purana, about 17,000 verses: set around the Kurma avatar, the tortoise, carrying the Ishvara-Gita and the Vyasa-Gita.
The Puranas in this library
Several of these, with the texts the tradition reads beside them, are already told as story, chapter after chapter:
- Stories from the Bhagavata, a chosen handful, from the boy Dhruva and the boy Prahlada to the lila of Krishna.
- Devi Mahatmya, the thirteen chapters of the Markandeya Purana that hold the three accounts of the Goddess.
- Harivamsha, the appendix parva of the Mahabharata, read beside the Puranas as a telling of the life of Krishna.
- The 32 stories of the Shiva Purana, Sati and Parvati, the births of Kartikeya and Ganesha, and the twelve Jyotirlingas, each told whole.
- The 26 stories of the Vishnu Purana, from the making of the world and the reign of Prithu to the Syamantaka jewel, the life of Krishna, and the dissolution.
- The 27 stories of the Shrimad Devi Bhagavata, which the Shakta tradition counts among the Mahapuranas, while most lists place it among the Upapuranas.
Read together, they run the arc the five marks describe, from creation to the dissolution, and back to the clearing where Suta began.